"Durade, I have won." Then he turned to his
friends. "Gentlemen, please pocket this gold."
With that he stepped to Allie's door. He saw her peering out. "Come,
Miss Lee," he said.
Allie stepped out, trembling and unsteady on her feet.
The Spaniard now seemed compelled to look up from the gold Hough's
comrades were pocketing. When he saw Allie another slow and
remarkable transformation came over him. At first he started
slightly at Hough's hand on Allie's arm. The radiance of his strange
passion for gold, that had put a leaping glory into his haggard
face, faded into a dark and mounting surprise. A blaze burned away
the shadows. His eyes betrayed an unsupportable sense of loss and
the spirit that repudiated it. For a single instant he was
magnificent--and perhaps in that instant race and blood spoke; then,
with bewildering suddenness, surely with the suddenness of a memory,
he became a black, dripping-faced victim of unutterable and
unquenchable hate.
Allie recoiled in the divination that Durade saw her mother in her.
No memory, no love, no gold, no wager, could ever thwart the
Spaniard.
"Senor, you tricked me!" he whispered.
"I beat you at your own game," said Hough. "My friends and your men
heard the stake--saw the game."
"Senor, I would not--bet--that girl--for any stake!"
"You have LOST her .
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